Articles for category: English Articles

The Most Dangerous Branch

On 7, 8 and 9 June 2019, from Friday to Sunday, the Moldovan Constitutional Court delivered six rulings which were rather atypical, to say the least. The court ordered the dissolution of the new parliament and declared all parliamentary acts unconstitutional, then invalidated the nomination of the new prime minister and the appointment of the government, and lastly, removed the Moldovan president from office and replaced him with the former prime minister as interim president. One week later, however, the situation became even more bizarre when the court announced a new judgment repealing each of its six rulings. What was going on in Chișinău and why?

17. Juni 2019

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Rewarding Virtuous Citizens

The Chinese Social Credit System, in particular as presented by Western media, is widely seen as the height of technological dystopia. But is that intuition well founded? Wessel Reijers has sought to identify features that he takes to justify a rejection of the Chinese Social Credit System but forgoes an equally critical consideration of the alternatives. Relying on the market, the default solution of Western societies, is not obviously more just.

17. Juni 2019

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How to Make the Perfect Citizen?

The Chinese Social Credit System gets easily likened to dystopian science fiction scenarios in the West, which at least in part seems to be related to the authoritarian character of the Chinese state. But we should assess the Social Credit System in its own right, asking: is the implementation of a Social Credit System leading to a dystopian political system?

17. Juni 2019

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CVM Here, CVM There: The European Commission in Bulgaria’s Legal Wonderland

On 13 June 2019, Bulgaria’s Minister of Justice Danail Kirilov declared that he would resign unless the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism to which Bulgaria was subjected was lifted before the end of the Juncker Commission’s term. This statement comes in the middle of a highly controversial reform proposed by Kirilov. The reform is one of the key arguments Bulgaria intends to use to persuade the European Commission that the CVM should be terminated this year.

16. Juni 2019

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Producing Legal History

Iustitia dilata est iustitia negata is a famous legal maxim meaning that “justice delayed is justice denied”. It goes without saying that it represents a universal truth. This truth is particularly relevant to the European Court of Human Rights which - on average - takes several years to deliver a judgment.

14. Juni 2019

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»No one has the right to be homeless…«

The Hungarian Constitutional Court's decision on the homelessness ban is not only devastating in terms of outcome, but also in terms of quality of the Court’s reasoning. This poor quality does not stem from the justices’ intellectual inability to adequately address the issues involved in this case, but from unacceptable political considerations spread among the members of the Court.

13. Juni 2019

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Human Dignity for Good Hungarians Only

On 4 June 2019 the packed Constitutional Court of Hungary issued an astonishingly inhuman decision: The criminalization and eventual imprisonment of homeless people, the Court declared, is in line with the 2011 Fundamental Law of Hungary. According to the majority, “ (…) nobody has the right to poverty and homelessness, this condition is not part of the right to human dignity.”

11. Juni 2019

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